Re: NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Columnist: The C.I.A.: Method and Madness

["Peter Majoy" <pwmjoy@earthlink.net>]

This article is a two edged sword. On the one hand it does a good job
de-mythologizing scientfic claims of infallibility and, as such, is useful
in applying to one of its manifestations, standardized testing. On the other
hand, you have to note that Brooks uses his critique of the CIA to support
Bush who had his own specially selected group cooking the books at the
Pentagon to help rationalize a policy that had already been in the planning
stages before September 11. Therefore, the Brooks critique comes full circle
to expose his own practice of the very thing he is condemning, posing as an
objective fellow.
-----Original Message-----
From: kvscanty@pacbell.net <kvscanty@pacbell.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org <arn-l@interversity.org>
Date: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 10:41 AM
Subject: [arn-l] NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Columnist: The C.I.A.: Method
and Madness


>This article from NYTimes.com
>has been sent to you by kvscanty@pacbell.net.
>
>
>I know this doesn't appear to be an anti-testing article but I think it
sums up the problem perfectly...karen
>
>kvscanty@pacbell.net
>
>
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>
>Op-Ed Columnist: The C.I.A.: Method and Madness
>
>February 3, 2004
> By DAVID BROOKS
>
>
>
>
>
>After speaking to "innumerable" U.S. intelligence officers,
>David Kay has concluded that Bush administration officials
>did not pressure analysts to exaggerate the threats posed
>by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On Capitol Hill, the
>Senate Intelligence Committee staff has interviewed over
>175 analysts and critics and reached the same conclusion.
>
>Leading the C.I.A.'s own internal review, Richard Kerr has
>apparently also concluded that there is no evidence that
>political pressures influenced the C.I.A. reports.
>
>And this is precisely the problem.
>
>For decades, the U.S.
>intelligence community has propagated the myth that it
>possesses analytical methods that must be insulated
>pristinely from the hurly-burly world of politics. The
>C.I.A. has portrayed itself as, and been treated as, a sort
>of National Weather Service of global affairs. It has
>relied on this aura of scientific objectivity for its
>prestige, and to justify its large budgets, despite a
>record studded with error.
>
>The C.I.A.'s scientific pretensions were established early
>on by Sherman Kent. In his 1949 book "Strategic
>Intelligence for American World Policy," Kent argued that
>the truth is to be approached through a systematic method,
>"much like the method of the physical sciences."
>
>This was at a time, just after the war, when economists,
>urban planners and social engineers believed that human
>affairs could be understood scientifically, and that the
>social sciences could come to resemble hard sciences like
>physics.
>
>If you read C.I.A. literature today, you can still see
>scientism in full bloom. The tone is cold, formal,
>depersonalized and laden with jargon. You can sense how the
>technocratic process has factored out all those insights
>that may be the product of an individual's intuition and
>imagination, and emphasized instead the sort of data that
>can be processed by an organization.
>
>This false scientism was bad enough during the cold war,
>when the intelligence community failed to anticipate
>seemingly nonrational events like the Iran-Iraq war or the
>Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But it is terrible now in
>the age of terror, because terror is largely nonrational.
>
>What kind of scientific framework can explain the rage for
>suicide bombings, now sweeping the Middle East? What
>technocratic mentality can really grasp the sadistic
>monster who was pulled out of the spider hole a few weeks
>ago? Under Saddam, Iraqi society seems to have been in a
>state of advanced decomposition, with drastic consequences
>for its W.M.D. program. How can corruption and madness be
>understood by analysts in Langley, who have a tendency to
>impose a false order on reality?
>
>We're in a heck of a bind. In the age of global terror and
>W.M.D., we can't wait until threats are right on top of us.
>And yet, given the errors over Iraqi W.M.D. stockpiles,
>we're going to find it very difficult to act preventively
>because we won't be able to have confidence in our
>information.
>
>The people at the C.I.A. understand the problem: on the
>C.I.A. Web site, you can find a book called "Psychology of
>Intelligence Analysis," which details the community's blind
>spots. But the C.I.A. can't correct itself by being a
>better version of itself. The methodology is the problem.
>
>When it comes to understanding the world's thugs and
>menaces, I'd trust the first 40 names in James Carville's
>P.D.A. faster than I'd trust a conference-load of game
>theorists or risk-assessment officers. I'd trust
>politicians, who, whatever their faults, have finely tuned
>antennae for the flow of events. I'd trust Mafia bosses,
>studio heads and anybody who has read a Dostoyevsky novel
>during the past five years.
>
>Most of all, I'd trust individuals over organizations.
>Individuals can use intuition, experience and a feel for
>the landscape of reality. When you read an individual's
>essay, you know you're reading one person's best guess, not
>a falsely authoritative scientific finding.
>
>So when the president names the members of intelligence
>review commission, I hope he won't just select people who
>are products of the old methodology. I hope he'll pick
>people who will fundamentally rethink intelligence. And I
>hope he'll throw in a few political hacks, just for a
>little reality.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/03/opinion/03BROO.html?ex=1076822915&ei=1&en
=dcdde85a09d69b9e
>
>
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